And yet, as Luther himself frequently says, moods and feelings are no guarantee of true faith; what is required are the works, which, like good fruit, always spring from a good tree.—So strongly, in spite of all his predilection for faith alone, is he impelled again and again to have recourse to works. In many passages they tend to become something more than mere signs confirmatory of faith. We need not examine here how far his statements concerning faith and works are consistent, and to what extent the sane Catholic teaching continued to influence him. What is remarkable, however, is, that, in his commendable efforts to urge the performance of works in order to curtail the pernicious results of his doctrine, Luther comes to attribute a saving action to “faith,” only on condition that, out of love of God, we “strive” against sin. In one of his last sermons at Eisleben he tells his hearers: Sins are forgiven by faith and “are not imputed _so far as you set yourself to fight against them_, and learn to repeat the Our Father diligently ... and to grow in strength as you grow in age; and you must be at pains to exercise your faith by resisting the sins that remain in you ... in short, you must become stronger, humbler, more patient and believe more firmly.”[152] The conditional “so far as” furnishes a key which has to be used in many other passages where works are demanded as well as faith. Faith, there, is real and wholesome “in so far as” it produces works: “For we too admit it and have always taught it, better and more forcibly than they [the Papists], that we must both preach and perform works, and that they must follow the faith, and, that, where they do not follow there the faith is not as it should be.”[153] Nor does he merely say that works of charity must follow eventually, but that charity must be infused by the Spirit of God together with faith of which it is the fruit. “For though faith makes us righteous and pure, yet it cannot be without love, and the Spirit must infuse love together with faith. In short, where there is true faith, there the Holy Ghost is also present, and where the Holy Ghost is, there love and all good things must also be.... Love is a consequence or fruit of the Spirit which comes to us wrapped up in the faith.”[154] “Charity is so closely bound up [with faith and hope] that it can never be parted from faith where this is true faith, and as little as there can be fire without heat and smoke, so little can faith exist without charity.”[155] From gratitude (as we have heard him state above, p. 26) the man who is assured of salvation must be “well disposed towards God and keep His commandments.” But if he be “sweetly disposed towards God” this must “show itself in all charity.”